The government has moved to provide machine readable passport (MRP) for the expatriate Bangladeshis living in Saudi Arabia.
In getting an MRP by Bangladeshis in Saudi Arabia, each expatriate will have to pay US$ 9 as service charge in addition to the existing passport fee.
As per the statistics of the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment (MEWOE), about 2.5-3.0 million Bangladeshis now live in Saudi Arabia of which most are labour.
But the government took up the project to provide MRPs among 1.5 million expatriate Bangladeshis in Saudi Arabia. It is not clear how the rest of the expatriates in Saudi Arabia will get the MRPs. However, some of the expatriates in Saudi Arabia have already received MRPs. They recently returned home and went bank to Saudia Arabia.
Earlier, the government moved for providing MRP among the Bangladeshi workers and other professionals living in Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Two separate firms have already been engaged for the distribution of MRPs for the non-resident Bangladeshis (NRBs) in UAE and Malaysia.
The total number of expatriate Bangladeshis living and working abroad is about 10 million or more.
Official sources said the initiative for MRP distribution among the Bangladeshi expatriates in Saudi Arabia and other countries has been undertaken as part of the global compliance for MRP issuance by 2015.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has asked all the countries to ensure issuing of the MRPs among their citizens by March 2015 instead of the current manual passports.
According to official sources, the Department of Immigration and Passport (DIP) has already selected a Malaysian firm through a tender process to award the job of MRP distribution among Bangladeshi expatriates in Saudi Arabia.
As per the proposal, the Malaysian firm, IRIS Corporation Berhad, which is now engaged in preparing MRPs under another project, will set up six application processing centres (APCs) in six (6) areas in Saudi Arabia where most of the expatriate Bangladeshis are living. Of the APCs, three (3) will be set up in Saudi capital Riyadh and three (3) in Jeddah.
The expatriates will then be asked to apply for the MRPs through these APCs to receive their passports by enrolling their names and submitting applications through prescribed forms. Some 20 mobile teams will also be engaged by the IRIS Corporation to collect the data of Bangladeshis in Saudi Arabia.
After the receipt of the applications, the IRIS will send those through online to the DIP headquarters via Bangladesh mission in Saudi Arabia.
The DIP will scrutinise the information and data, and prepare the MRPs against the applicants and then send those back to the Bangladesh mission offices in Riyadh and Jeddah for handing over the passports to the applicants. For the whole process, the officials said, the Malaysian firm will charge US$ 9 from each MRP applicant as service charge in addition to the normal charge of having a passport.
According to them, the Home Ministry put forward the proposal of the IRIS Corporation to the Cabinet Division for the Purchase Committee’s approval. Once the proposal is approved, the IRIS will start the process of setting up its offices in the Saudi Arabia, said a DIP official.
Source: UNB Connect
